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Last weekend, Wiley reported that several top PR executives from Activision and Nintendo are coming to Apple, as the Cupertino tech giant gears up to better focus on the merits of iOS gaming with these new hires. In addition to the PR muscle Apple is poaching from gaming rivals, it now appears that Apple's plans for future cloud-based services is prompting new hires at an escalating rate.

According to published reports this week, Kevin Timmons, the former general manager of Microsoft's data center group, has been hired by Apple. Timmons was the big man in data storage at Microsoft for two years. Previously, he spent ten years in operations at Yahoo.

When All Things Digital looked into Timmons' new job, few details turned up, but indications have surfaced that his role "may extend beyond his datacenter expertise," an interesting development in light of "recent chatter about Apple's rumored cloud initiatives." At this time, it isn't clear where Timmons will be stationed, although some expect it to be at the company's gargantuan new data center in North Carolina.

The news today of Timmons arrival at Apple punctuates a week of headlines that give further support to longstanding rumors that Apple is ramping up its aspirations for cloud-based services. On Wednesday, in fact, we reported that Apple is actively seeking (on its job posting board) new cloud-friendly engineers. Apple has posted several new curious job listings, one of which is for a "Cloud Systems Software Engineer." In the posting, Apple says the new hire will be absorbed into a "small team" entrusted with the responsibility of bulking up "the future of cloud services at Apple."